Public Broadcasting: Still a Partisan Tool

Your Tax Dollars Brought You Wall-to-Wall Watergate and Iran-Contra, But Not Live Clinton Coverage

By

Tim Graham

October 16, 1998 - 1:00am

National Public Radio legal reporter Nina
Totenberg is the White House's favorite journalist of the week. She quoted an unnamed
Justice Department official on Wednesday's All Things Considered saying it was
"breathtaking" that independent counsel Kenneth Starr did not tell Janet Reno
that he'd had six conversations with Paula Jones lawyer Gilbert Davis in 1994. Totenberg's
source maintained this would have caused Attorney General Janet Reno to disallow his
request to investigate the Monica Lewinsky affair.

Totenberg appeared on Good
Morning America Thursday (in her role as an ABC News "contributor") to
repeat the anonymous revelations. This official clashed with Reno, who told ABC's Aaron
Brown on the same show: "I can't comment because we're reviewing all the issues at
this point."

Other than MSNBC (where Keith Olbermann asked if this would be enough to get Starr
fired) and CNBC (where Geraldo Rivera put Totenberg's charges on the front burner), other
media outlets yawned at this supposed scoop. (The Washington Post wrote
"News organizations, including The Washington Post, reported those contacts
in January.") But Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have added Totenberg's
suggestive story to their quiver of arrows aimed at Starr when he testifies before their
impeachment inquiry.

Once again,
Totenberg, who broke Anita Hill's unproven sexual harassment allegations
against Clarence Thomas in 1991 and compared her Hill leaks to Watergate and the Pentagon
Papers, covers the Paula Jones case as a politically injurious "Clinton-bashing"
enterprise. Despite their role in promoting the Hill story, NPR ignored Jones' sexual
harassment charges against Clinton for three months until Jones filed a lawsuit. NPR
hasn't had much more enthusiasm for the Lewinsky story. The Newseum's Web site carried
this dismissal: "'NPR has been behind on the story (of allegations against President
Clinton), but we've been deliberately behind,' National Public Radio's Jeffrey Dvorkin
said at an Inside Media program on March 20. 'So much of this has been innuendo, has not
been sourced properly. We've tried [to focus on] how this affects the presidency.'"

PBS showed a similar lack of Lewinsky fervor. Just 13 days into the story in January, The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer ran a segment on the media's "rush to judgment."
As the commercial networks all aired the President's videotaped perjury before the grand
jury, PBS ran its kiddie shows. They also skipped live coverage of the impeachment debate
in the House Judiciary Committee and the full House. PBS took the same hands-off approach
with the Senate fundraising hearings last year. [See box.]

Yes, PBS broadcast the Watergate hearings live during the day and again at night on
more than 150 stations nationwide. Yes, PBS brought the Iran-Contra hearings to America
live. But now, in the age of cable news and C-SPAN, the time's reserved for Barney and the
Teletubbies. For the third of Americans who don't have cable - and those deprived viewers
are the target PBS pledges to cherish and serve at congressional funding request time -
it's public affairs be damned. If PBS and NPR were hard-breathing cops on the scandal beat
during Republican administrations, they've spent the Clinton years at the donut shop. -
Tim Graham